The burning fairy
by Bagge
Summary: Luna Lovegood is a curious girl, ever interested in what lies outside the knowledge of man. Some of that knowledge would better have stayed outside. Horror. Crossover Rowling & Lovecraft.
1. The burning fairy  chapter 1

**The burning fairy**

_Luna Lovegood is a curious girl, ever interested in what lies outside the knowledge of man. Some of that knowledge would better have stayed outside. Horror. Crossover Rowling/Lovecraft._

_Warning: This is a Lovecraftian horror-story with a certain dreamy-eyed Ravenclaw in the lead role. I do like Luna a lot, and I wish her all good, but there are certain things she would have come better off not dabbling with. I am afraid this will not end that well..._

There are some people in this world that seems never fully to belong to it. As fairies of light they descent from their own realm to live with us for a while, walking among us but not really being as the rest of us. They are burning so brightly with the light of there own world that if you look at them close enough you feel that you can almost see through the veils clouding your sight, catching a glimpse of the strange, non-human world beyond. They are burning so brightly that eventually they burn out and disappear.

That is what I was thinking that fatal night when I realized that that cursed book was missing, that that blasphemic vault had indeed been opened and that the person I had regarded as a friend had burned out.

Luna Lovegood has always been considered a bit odd, also by the few selected persons that considered her a friend. Only child of an experimental witch and a wizard devoted to make official the truth he felt was left out from other publications, Luna was from very early age taught in the subtle art of seeing what other did not see. Her childhood, from all I can infer, was a happy time, filled by fairies, snorkacks and limitless love from her parents. That is how I like to think of it.

I got to know Luna as we both attended the same school, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Our friendship was not immediately forged, however. She was a year younger then me and we were in different houses, limiting our number of contacts. Also when we started to meet regularly, mostly due to common friends and certain common activities, our relationship was of a cold and formal kind rather than a friendly. In the name of honesty I must confess that this was due to my own attitude rather than her. Luna has always been a very warm person, also to those not returning her affection. I pride, or at least, by that time I did pride, myself in being a rational person, able to infer the connections between observed events with my own reasoning and thereby being able to in a logical way distinguish between what is false and what is true. Luna's almost aggressive belief in just about anything ever rumoured, hinted or guessed rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning. Nargles and helipoaths seemed for my studious mind as an insult almost as big as downright lie, and secretly I couldn't help worrying that the girl was in a subtle way making fun of me when she ranted about those mythological critters. I am sad to say that this made me act fairly cold towards her.

Still, the first link and the strongest link of our friendship was to be just that clash in our belief systems. Provoked as I was by her crazy statements I often underwent substantial difficulties and work to prove her wrong. I cannot but smile when I think back at those long evenings spent in the library, checking on names and places and references, followed by the shouting matches with Luna the day after. That explorer could not have been in that place since he was at another expedition at the time. That creature could not possibly live in that desert due to dehydration problems, and so on. It was only me who did the shouting. Luna only smiled fondly at me and calmly answered my questions. Annoyingly often her points were more valid than mine, spurring me to new rounds in the library.

We were both young, and it was obvious that we actually shared a large amount of curiosity and eagerness for knowledge, and to top it all we were having those discussions almost weekly when we were as most active. I do not doubt in the least that we actually would have become friends soon enough even if it had not been for the Snorkack incidence. But as it was, fate gave our friendship a little nudge to help it on the way.

It had started just as any other of our small disputes, which by now had become routine for us as well as for our class-mates. Why, I remember a boy of my year asking another whether he thought the weekly Quidditch -practise or the weekly Lovegood-Granger row would be more entertaining. I do not remember the answer, but for me I know that I at this time was looking forward to our weekly row with anticipation. This particular dispute had started with a report published in the magazine of Luna's father - The Quibbler - about her very favourite creature, the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. The report, which she defended with slightly more energy than she usually did, claimed to have observed a small group of Swedish snorkacks during several days. It also contained photos. As usual I scrutinized the report most carefully, but to my increasing annoyance I could not spot anything self-contradicting in it. Several days I devoted to the snorkack and I can tell you without lying that no detail, however trivial, escaped my ruthless inspection. The photos were sharp, and as far as I could tell not a forgery, but nevertheless I contacted a few photographers and learned that they shared my opinion. One of them even expressed his fascination for the existence of this animal finally being proved. I then wrote to the Swedish ministry of magic to confirm the expedition, and I got the answer just the day after, without doubt clarifying that the expeditions had indeed taken place as described, and also that the ministry were currently working on a conservation plan for the snorkacks. Finally in a desperate attempt to find ammunitions against Luna and her article I managed to track down the article writer himself. I flood to him late one night and I am afraid to say that I had the old dear go through all but a full-scale inquisitorial trial before my curiosity was satisfied. Back home I could only stare at the massive amount of information I had gathered, and the next day I sought Luna out and told her that in the face of evidence I could have no opinion other than that the journal was telling the truth and that the Snorkack actually did exist. From her reaction it was clear that I had gained a friend for life.

For life, however futile and short.

Together we put together the information I had gathered to an article, proving without doubt the truthfulness of the first report. We distributed it at school and gave it to our teachers, and some of them were impressed enough to pull some strings that landed our article, together with the original report, in the big newspapers of the country. We also sent a copy to Sweden and as far as I have gathered it was well received. For me and Luna this was the end of our rows and the beginning of our partnership. From that day we worked together, and it was clear that it was a fruitful cooperation. Her imagination and brilliant creativity together with my methodical search for knowledge and rational reasoning made us all but unstoppable. She would open up the research field, bubbling with ideas and theories, and I would examine them one by one to limit down our research to the possible and the imaginable, and then she would go over my work and open up that I had ruled out as impossible, making me regard it from yet another angel. In that way we would push on, and we did learn many things that I don't think many people would believe in if I told them. Some of our findings we published, most of it was shelved. I can't readily give an account on what we were looking for, what we were hoping to achieve with this frantic, time-consuming research. All I know is that I enjoyed this cooperation with Luna more than I had enjoyed anything in my life before. It might very well have been the sole purpose with our research, at least from my point of view. However, lately I have come to wonder if she had another goal than just the joy of exploration, that she was looking for something in particular.

As I said, Luna was the one opening up our research fields, and I soon understood and accepted that her mild disposition apart, she was the natural leader of the two of us. Half of the time I didn't understand the whole extent of what we were studying until we were in the middle of it. I pride myself with being pretty brainy, but Luna was the single most intelligent person I had ever met.

As time went by our focus shifted from mythological beast and creatures and more and more came to deal with the human mind and some particular hard to believe reports of dream travelling, astral projections and similar observations. The inherited subjectivity of this field made my research methods harder to use, but the more rewarding were the observations I actually managed to rule out or confirm. Luna was urging me on, and I did not want to make her disappointed.


	2. The burning fairy chapter 2

There were periods when I felt we were not making progress at all, that all we found were rumours and that our efforts were wasted. At those times, Luna never failed to encourage me and to make me feel enthusiasm. We were travelling in the very boundaries of man's knowledge, she reminded me. Not only did we have to invent our research methods as we went along, but also we had to accept that very often the results we obtained, however correct, could not possibly make any sense until we were able to understand them in a context. I listened to her words and believed them.

At other times, I felt we were rapidly progressing, that we were finally on to something genuinely new and unknown, but she would only shake her head and point me in another direction. I obeyed and together we plunged even deeper into the unknown. She was never impatient, never lost fate in me, but sometimes she made me feel a bit like a child, playing with the tools of her father with no possibility to understand their true purpose. But Luna did see and understand. She was the beacon and I followed.

I think our classmates were a bit worried about us sometimes. It happened now and then that we lost several nights of sleep, staying up with our experiments, and we were gradually removing our presence from the social networks and happenings of the school. Our research taking such a toll on our time, we being so content with our own company, it is no wonder that we did not feel the need for the activities and people that had filled our time before we started to cooperate. And our research was simply to exciting to abandon.

We experimented. I remember the taste of the potion, only partly prepared after known instructions, still linger in my mouth as I allowed my head to rest on the pillow. Luna was bent over me, wand in hand, attentively staring into my eyes. I could not remember at the moment what she was looking for, the potion making me drowsy and my thoughts slow. I do remember that she was asking me something, urgently, and that I did my best to answer her. But my mouth seemed to be unable to form the words. All that I heard, or imagine that I heard was a guttural hissing. But Luna seemed content with this and put a cold hand on my forehead and told me to sleep. The next morning when I woke up my head did ache but Luna seemed even more happy than usual. She told me that we had succeeded, that the experiment had opened up yet another opening for our research. I tried to get the details out of her, what I had revealed when my mind had been relaxed by the potion and her home-made spells. But she could not give me any answers. Not the measurable, objective answers I wanted anyway. I had to work only with her feelings and intuitions, clear for her mind but incredibly vague and airy for me. She watched my work, told me in which direction to head and said that we were making progresses.

At other times she was the one doing the experiments, taking the potion, drifting away to somewhere I could not follow her. I sat by her side, holding her hand, the antidote ready the moment she showed any sign of needing it. At one time for a single, heart freezing moment I thought that I had been too late, that I had allowed her going so far that she would not be able to come back. But then she opened her eyes, their silvery blue with slight difficulty focusing on me and she told me of the marvels she had witnessed.

I have promised, by writing this, to tell the accurate tale of what happened that fateful night and the events leading up to it, and that is what I am attempting to do, withholding nothing and in no way trying to gloss over my own part in the forbidden rites that lead to the loss of my dearest friend. Even so I feel that this narration by necessity becomes annoyingly vague and thin, but yet there is no other way I can possibly write this. The very nature of our research makes it impossible for me to concretely describe our findings, to mediate how significant an observation it was when Luna one morning could declare that she had dreamt of blue the night before, or when I, under the influence of the potions and spells and suggestive incantations, suddenly could hear the sound of stone grinding against stone. The task is of the same magnitude as trying to explain the finest point of magical focus theory for a muggle from the other part of the globe. There are no words available, there is no common platform to build the mutual understanding on. Perhaps that is where I and Luna erred. If we had been moving in a slower pace, building such a platform of understanding, interrupting our research to describe our findings, quantify our data and put it in a context of known metaphysics, then perhaps we could have avoided the fate that were awaiting us. But we did not interrupt ourselves. We pushed on, following not the described knowledge but simply the _known_ knowledge, the clear understanding we both shared that what we were doing was real, and in that way leaving every recognition with what was previously known behind. I don't think we ever looked back.

We had to obtain ingredients for our potions, parchments with the strangest of spells and even more sinister magical objects. One or two times we did steal to obtain what we needed. The potion masters office was ruthlessly looted by us. The restricted section of the library was the goal for many nightly expeditions. But soon it was obvious that the school did not manage to fulfil our needs. Then we turned to other sources. The dreg of the wizarding world, those gathering in the shades of Knockturn ally, those living in the forgotten parts of the muggle world, to those we went with our demands. Gold changed hands and no questions were asked. These were dark times, and there was a real risk that our trade would attract unwelcome attention and be misinterpreted. But we managed to keep ourselves out of trouble, and the politics did not interest us. At one time we had to use force against one of those we were dealing with when he treated to disclose our secret gathering of the resources we so badly needed. He was never missed, his death never reached the newspapers. His kind seldom attracts attention, in life or in death.

At Hogwarts, in the secret study chamber we had set up in an unused part of the castle, our laboratory was growing. We became interested in the properties of living material, firstly plants but later animal flesh and blood. At times I am afraid to say that our study resembled more a slaughter house than anything else. At those times we were fearfully afraid of someone finding out and we renewed our hiding charms. At other times, however, the laboratory equipment as well as the knives were packed away and all that gave away the true nature of our studies was the strange herbs slowly crumbling in the brazier, filling the room with a sweet and intoxicating scent. At those times we usually sat in the sofa, inhaling the fumes and talking with soft voices, trying to describe what we both felt were real. I remember the face of Luna at those moments. So very alive, her eyes alit with a strange glow, her mouth silently moving as she tried to find the word describing what she could clearly see. Never was she as alive as those times in our study.


	3. The burning fairy chapter 3

It was I who first found the references to the old wizard, whose name I now curse, in the most forbidden of all books in the library. A necromancer of the blackest kind he had been thrown out from Hogwarts when his gruesome experiments had been known and his laboratory had been sealed up. I read the description of his deed and I marvelled. How close he had been the same path me and Luna were now following. Misguided and without the refined knowledge we in this modern age poses, he had perverted his findings and made nothing but petty parlour tricks compared to the true potential of that certain lore. How well we could have used those results of his. I showed this to Luna and she agreed. Here, at last, were something we could use to obtain the knowledge and understanding we had hunted for so long.

Knowing fully well how easy it is to hide something at Hogwarts, even during the long centuries, we reflected that his laboratory could very well still be intact. Many were the spells we used, many the maps and books we sought for aid, but all in vain. If this vault was still at Hogwarts, its presence eluded us. We tried - I tried - to obtain more information about the necromancer himself and his work, but all for nothing. A few times I found small references to his name, all insignificant and of no value, and a growing feeling inside me said that the deeds of this wizard had been erased from the pages I was reading rather than never included in the first place. Needless to say this only made my curiosity greater.

Many were the sources the used. I tell you now, in shame, that we encountered some of the darkest wizards of that age with our questions, we consulted books that would never have been allowed into the libraries of Hogwarts, however well guarded, and the dark rituals we used to speak with those who had lived before us makes me shudder when I think of it. But such were our disposition at this time that we never once questioned the means needed for us to obtain the answers we so craved for.

Along with the whispered hints about this long dead necromancer and his deeds and his heirloom, we came across, I dear not even say rumour, such was the vagueness of the fragmented stories we heard, but rather a rumour of a rumour, about a book.

A book forbidden by muggles and wizards alike since it was written in far away Arabia at the dawn of time. A book containing the secrets of death and beyond death as well as beyond what human beings ever were meant to know. A book which never even the most power hungry dark wizard would touch, however desperate for a weapon against his enemies. A book that could help me and Luna on our quest for true knowledge.

It was I, again, who in my faithful library after a Olympian search started to find the clues. The absence of the paragraphs that should have been in some of the more obscure books. The lack of certain registers and lists. I showed this to Luna and she agreed with me. There was a chance, however slight, that this book had once been at Hogwarts, and that the necromancer who was now occupying a large part of our woken - and sleeping - life had once made use of it.

In dreams and in visions we hunted these eluding fragments of the past with ruthless energy. By means opened for us by our research, means that I doubt any other living witch or wizard at that time could have made use of or even understood. Inhaling the strange fumes and lulled to trance by the soft incantations from the other's mouth we roamed wide and far in the unearthly, eerie land that are the dreams and many strange encounters we had. As the sun rose over Hogwarts we walked by the lake or in the forest, talking about what we had seen and drawing our conclusions.

A few months after we had directed our research towards this old necromancer and this strange book, we found our time for the study being annoyingly limited. The teachers as well as our class mates were taking an increasingly large, if yet misguided, interest in our health and social life and seemed to be of the impression that we were lonely and unhappy. Thus we suddenly found ourselves in the focus of a large number of attempts of being socialized with. Some of these were amusing and actually of some interest, such as the guided Hogwarts tour some of the ghost organized for our respective houses (they made a point of separate me and Luna at those occasions). Others were downright annoying, such as when the boys of my year dragged me to Quidditch-practices or pointless Hogsmede visits. But we put up a good front and did not complain. And we made a point of not being seen together as much any longer. Our nightly sessions were held only irregularly and when we were sure of not being guarded. Of course this put a highly inconvenient inhibition on our research and I can't enough emphasis how frustrating it was, knowing that we were on the right track but not being able to follow it properly. Luna was even more vexed than me about these interruptions, but now it was my turn talking to her about patience and about not rushing into things. We had worked too hard to allow unknowing commoners like these to destroy our research, I said, and we would give them no reason to limit our freedom further. She agreed, grudgingly, and we did our best not to alarm our class mates.

Separated we still tried to pursue our nightly dream quests, but I soon learned that without Luna by my side it was all but impossible to descend even to the most shallow levels of dreamland. I doubled the dose of potion and forced my mind down the stony staircase that marks the entrance to that strange land, but hardly had I begun my travel until I was dragged back to the waken world. I could have screamed in frustration, and perhaps I did because one night I was awoken by the girls sharing my dormitory, pale and worried in the moonlight. I calmed them by saying that I had had a bad dream, but the day after I got many glances from them and their friends. I understood that I had to relax my efforts for a while.

Luna was more successful. Dream travel has always come easier for her, after all, and she was more used to make her mind do her bidding. She told me one day by lunch how she had for just a fleeing moment encountered the shadow of the man we were seeking. By seeing her he had taken flight, but she knew now what realms he roamed and she was full of confidence that she would be able to find him again. I saw the glow in her eyes and I realized that she was right.

And so it was. Not fully two weeks later - two for me totally wasted weeks devoted to my schoolwork and keeping my classmates concerns at arms length - Luna summoned me, urgently telling me that she needed a nightly session, badly needed to share with me what she had learned. We had not been in much contact these weeks, not wanting to alarm those who still suspected us, but I could see that she had been working hard. She constantly looked tired, her silvery eyes darker than usual. She had always been thin but now she was downright skinny. Her normally golden hair now hung lifeless and faint on her shoulders. Her normally so calm and graceful movements through the crowd of the school, as a gentle stream floating past a beautiful meadow, was now replaced with a nervous energy, emitting from inside her and affecting everything she did. I expressed my concerns for her health but she only shrugged it off. We had far more important things to deal with, she told me. The very same night we were to meet in our secret study, the study which had now been sealed up for months, and there we would perform an experiment bolder and potentially more rewarding than anything we had done so far. There was no time for her to explain herself in deeper detail, the pupils of the school being everywhere around us, but she stressed again the importance, the overwhelming necessity for me to be there, whatever stood in my way. I was a bit taken aback but I promised her to attend, promised her that nothing would be able to stop me. She was content and we went separate ways. I turned to watch her as she left the great hall. Probably it was only my eyes who played me a trick, but for a moment, just for the split second of a heartbeat, I could swear that I saw my friend Luna Lovegood enclosed by a bright burning light, unlike any other flame I have ever seen either in this realm or in my dreams. No one else seemed to notice it though.


	4. The burning fairy chapter 4

That night I stole myself away from Gryffindor tower, concealed from human sight with spells never taught at Hogwarts. Still, I had my wand in hand should I encounter someone. I did not, however. The dark corridors of the school seemed void of life. Even the usually snoring portraits were empty and lifeless. I could as well have been the only living person in the world that night.

Luna was awaiting me in our secret study. The braziers were already alit, emitting those the scents from many strange herbs, the unearthly symbols were already chalked on the floor. She greeted me, anxious and eager, and when I touched her she felt electrical, as if emitting energy of a kind I could not hope to fathom. I inquired for our errand this night. Asked her what business we would conduct and what study we would perform. She smiled at me, said that our labours had at last given result. That the book which we had sought was now within our grasp. That dread necromancer had spoken to her in her sleep, she said. He had been reluctant to answer her pleas, but she had encountered him with strength, and a strength greater than his. They had struggled and he had been forced to talk, to tell her the secrets he had obtained in life, and to talk about the book. Tonight we would seek it out. Walking in dreams we would travel the path only the most powerful of dreamers had ever dared, following the deeds of a man who had been dead for centuries.

As she talked she prepared the potion and poured up a carefully measured amount for me to drink.

I have previously stated that Luna was taking the role as a leader during our research, and that the experiments we conducted were of her rather than mine design. This is true, but I feel that at this point of mine narration I must stress that even if I confess myself of having followed instructions rather than giving them, I do not wish to put blame on Luna for what came to pass. Never had I for the long time we conducted our research tried to talk her out of any of the often weird and sometimes repulsive actions our study required. Never had I in any way advocated a decline in our research or implied that we were travailing outside the boundaries of what knowledge should be readily pursued. I was just to the same extent as her responsible for the direction our quest for knowledge had taken.

However, at that moment I was frightened. The unhuman, nervous energy possessing my friend was scaring me. The boldness of the experiment she proposed made me shiver and unbidden my mind went to some of those things we had encountered during our travels, horrible things I had managed to shut out of my conscious but which now made themselves reminded. I said this to Luna, reminded her of the risks we were undertaking, the risks that would be made manifold greater this evening. She listened to me and answered me, the silvery eyes of her never leaving mine. We were taking risks, she reminded me, since the gain was so great. We had made it so far, we would make it in further attempts. She put my mind on those certain defences, spells and things older then spells, we had gathered and never had needed to put to a test, defences that should prove sufficient for most of the tings we could encounter in the ever changing land of the dreams. We had each other, she reminded me. There was nothing that could hurt us, nothing that could stand in our way.

I listened to her and I believed her. I took the potion and felt my mind leave my body.

Side by side we travelled down the staircase of stone and through the gate to the land of the dream. The cats watched us in silence as we followed an odd trail, walking past the muddy huts of those who dwell here. Luna was leading the way and I was holding her hand. A creature that stood before us, denying us passage, was annihilated by a word me and Luna spoke in unison. The sky over us was purple and throbbing.

The vault before us was of stone, slimy from the many years dripping of water and propagating of those things that live in darkness. The door was crested with a skull and a snake - yes, those of Slytherin's house have always felt comfort in their symbols. Luna opened the door with a word of such nature that I never had heard such spoken before, and we entered. What age had not crippled laid unspoilt before our eyes. The tomes, the chalked symbols, the strange herbs and the knives. To my eye, that blasphemic vault is still clear as if I saw it just yesterday. That workbench cramped with the most unholy of magical artefacts and potion ingredients - most of which were long rotten. The braziers decorated with skeletons of non-human origin. The rug carelessly thrown aside to give room for a symbol, large as a full grown man lying down, of the most grotesque and ill boding nature. Luna eagerly went forth to the tomes, which also I could see were of large promise. She only gave them a hasty glance, however, before she concluded that what we searched were not here, were not to be found among the trinkets of lesser value the old necromancer had left behind. But it had been here and in dream there was a trial we could follow.

So further we travelled. Through mist and madness went our path, past decay and queerness, light and fantasy. Never did Luna hesitate or stray from the road we were following. Others followed us. Those inhabiting this particular part of the dream, those with the many legs and the large eyes. Those who are ever hungry. They followed us, curiously seeking enlightenment of our purpose and our goal. We ignored them such as wisely is done.

How I marvelled as we reached our goal, much further away then I had ever been before, to recognize it as a mere mirror image of the one place I knew so well. The Hogwarts library were stretching before us, but it was disproportionate and colourless, a dream of the place rather than the place itself. Eagerly we went forth, but here, for the first time, Luna showed irresolution. We followed the narrow corridors between the book shelves, we climbed as high we could reach on some and scrutinized the floor level books in other, but the trail we had followed eluded us. We said those words we knew to be said at such a place, but none spread light over our predicament. Yes, we were near to giving up when fate came to our help. Of course, when I think back I can't but wonder if it was really fate afoot at that moment.

One of the critters that had followed us suddenly gave yell and when we inquired for its cause we saw to our slight repulsion that it had been severely damaged, bitten as by a horrible mouth filled by tooth larger than can be expected. Ignorant for the warning thus amply provided we searched the place where we had found the critter, and soon we found that passway between the shelves, so narrow and concealed that we would never had found it, had it not been for this unfortunate creature of the dreaming. Carefully we approached the passway, and it was soon evident for us what entity had caused the distress for our involuntarily guide. The guardian was a foul beast of a kind never seen or spoken about in the world of the human. It was destroyed by me and Luna.

For how long we followed that passway I cannot say, just as I cannot say how long time we had spent searching for it or travelling to the library. It felt as an eternity, walking between those stuffy book shelves, neither air nor light in more than the most feeble quantities. Luna was walking before me and I was following, the narrow path not permitting us walking side by side. The trail was evident, we knew that we were approaching our goal.

Even by the standards of the dreaming it is hard for me to relate to the events that were to follow. Indeed, sometimes I feel that the only way to make sense of them is too regard them as a shadow play. Only by regarding the events that are recountable and extrapolate into that moment of which nothing can be told or understood, some knowledge of what came to pass can be gain. Or maybe a simpler explanation would be that I simply have chosen to forget, as the human mind is so inclined to, those events that finally tore my friend away from me. Sometimes, when I wake up and my mind still is vivid with the nightmares I have endured during the few moments of restless sleep, I feel that this is the most probable explanation and that I one day, when my mind is less watchful and allows these memories to slip into my conscious thoughts, I will yet again experience the true horror of that moment. At any rate, my task with this written account is to describe as objective and as truthful as possible what I encountered. Perhaps someone who read this will be able to explain what I can not.

Walking through the pathway, following my friend, I could sense the pull off the book growing steadily more intense. I could feel its containment in subtle ways change the very fabric of the place we were inhabiting, I could feel the lure of its secrets. From the increased eagerness in Luna's behaviour I can tell that she felt it as well. With this new attraction ahead my companions speed increased. She was all but running down the path and I needed all the strength I could muster to be able to keep up with her. I called out for her, but she did not answer. Knowing fully well how fatal it would be to loose contact I forced myself to run as fast as my companion, but even then her speed seemed to increase. Up ahead I could see a light emit, a light of a wave-length never seen or measured on earth. The lure of the book was increasing.

That was when my faithful friend, my companion and my collaborator finally slowed down, allowing me to catch up, my heart pounding, my breath hissing. She was a few steps ahead and I could see her walking, as calmly and unconcerned as she ever had walked the flowery paths of Hogwarts. On a small table before her lay the book, terrible and sinister, sending shivers down my spine. I called out to my friend again, but she did not answer me, she was too absorbed by the awaiting secrets. As I reached her she had lifted the book from its table, and for all my word is worth I swear that the strange light did flicker as she did so. She was holding it in both arm, in the same way as a mother might hold a child, cradling it and protecting it. Her face was turned away from me, her eyes on the book in her arms. I reached out and touched Luna's shoulder.

Never could I, even if given hundreds of years, remember how I fought my way back through the weird, labyrinthic land that is the dreaming. Never could I retell what words I uttered there at the farthest edge of my knowledge, or to what purpose. I am even unable to explain why I at all managed to find my way, how I crying and torn managed to endure the painful ascent by the staircase of stone. However, I was not surprised when I opened my eyes and learned that I was alone in our study, that my friend was no longer by my side and that the brazier she had lit herself now was cold. Neither did it surprise me as I later learned that a book of the most dangerous disposition had indeed been robbed from the most guarded section of the library, or that a secret vault, built below the very foundations of the castle, had caved in during the night.

Luna Lovegood has never been seen since, neither in this world nor in dreaming. I have told and retold my story dozens of times for the aurors and the unspeakables who the ministry has sent to question me, but I don't think they believe me. This narratorium is written not to reduce my own guilt in the death - if a death indeed it is - of a truly remarkable person, but as an explanation, most probable the only explanation that will ever be available, for those who as I lost something that night that can never be replaced.

When I reached out and touched Luna's shoulder it was cold as ice, making me hastily gasp and snatch my hand away. I saw her, standing just a few hands widths away from me, and for my eye it seemed that the light that had previously been emitting from the tome in her arms were now emitting from herself. The dancing, queer light of a disposition I had never seen before. As in response to my gesture she turned around, slowly, moving with a grace former unseen with her. Whether I screamed or not I do not know, but when I revisit that moment in my dreams this is usually, mercifully, when I wake up. At that time I did not wake up however.

The face of my friend was no longer a face that I knew. What had once been a crown of golden hair, long and slightly entangled, was now a stripy snarl of slimy seaweed from the blackest of depths in the ocean. What once was a small, slightly freckled nose was now a snout. The mouth that so often had smiled and laughed with mine was a sneer, filled by fangs and a flickering tongue. Her skin was no longer pale and smooth, but greenish and scaly. I do remember taking a step backwards at that moment, my eyes locked in disbelief at the horror who was wearing the clothes of my friend. Around the thing the light was pulsing, as if she was burning with a blasphemic, unearthly fire that did not consume. In its webbed hands the thing held the book we had come to search for, and to my excited mind it seemed to me as it was taunting me.

Then I met the eyes of the creature, its gaze holding mine, and I saw and understood. I understood that when - if indeed - I woke up, my friend would not be by my side. That the knowledge we so long had been seeking had now been obtained, that our last experiment had been a successful one indeed. And I understood that Luna, she who for so long had been burning so brightly in our world, now had burnt out.

The thing who stood before me, the creature of the fey which carried the blasphemic book I now wish I had never heard about - regarded me calmly. It regarded me with its big, silvery eyes, eyes like orbs of spun moonshine from the coldest of winter nights. The eyes I had so often gazed into, the eyes I had so often dreamed about. The creature that stood before me regarded me with the eyes of Luna Lovegood.


End file.
